Super Powers in DCUC!

[SDcomics]

I'm far from nuts over the toys, but I don't think the minis being in Earth-One continuity (even the third one, because how important are Cyclotron and co. anyway? - which is like, three continuities ago anyway, is a bad thing. Or an important one.

I never read them.  I probably never will.  They're not canon to me.

These are, though:







Mike
(And that's all the "JLA versus Darkseid" I'll ever need.)  

[JSayonara]

I have no problem with Super-powers in the DC line.

So long as they're not those crappy concept things, they're almost all valid DC characters and Mattel did the right thing by even allowing us our pick of comic accurate or re-designed New Gods.

I can even overlook Cyclotron and GP.
At the time, they were two figures that we could take or leave thanks to the stands...and I left 'em.

I can't say that I mind the 4H and Toyguru allowing a little nostalgia to creep in, as during the boom years they were doing a hell of a job giving us amazing stuff.

I can deal with a little self gratification in return for all the good stuff they did.

Now the Super-Friends...that's a whole 'nother thing.

[Hyperion]

I never read them.  I probably never will.  They're not canon to me.

Just a question about this and not really meant to start an argument or anything.

How does this work for you?  Do you consider ONLY the books that you've read canon?  How does that work for books under the company banner, but are "Elseworlds/What If/imprint banner" type things?

I ask because I look back at DC in the 50s and all the goofy "Scottish Batman in Space" and "Plaid Superman marries Lena Luthor" type stories are the type of thing that I don't consider canon, but have read.

I've read the SP minis and always considered them to be the last stories of the SF universe and not really a part of the Earth One experience. YMMV

[SDcomics]

Continuity.  What's canon and what's not.  Good questions.

I think there are some stories that have been published that were considered to be canon at the time that have to be ignored now.  Any story that has Superman meeting John F. Kennedy for example.  Superman is not 70 years old.  I remember an issue of Strange Tales that had Ben and Johnny of the FF meeting the Beatles.  Well, if Ben and Johnny did that, Ben would be in his 90's and Johnny would be in his 70's. Obviously those stories can't still be in continuity.

I'm no big continuity wonk.  These are all made up stories, after all.  If an issue of Detective comes out today that completely contradicts some plot point of last month's Batman, I'm not losing sleep over it.  Shit happens.

That said, from my point of view the Super Friends and Super Powers comics are not canon and they are not in continuity.  Robin was never a member of the Justice League.  There never was a Legion of Doom.  There was no Hall of Justice.  Robin was in the Teen Titans.  There was an Injustice Gang and a Secret Society of Super-Villains.  The Justice League met in a cave in Happy Harbor, Rhode Island and then in a satellite.

I don't know what DC's position on the matter is.  I have no idea if the Super Powers and Super Friends stuff is "officially" considered canon or not.

I don't care.  Not to me it isn't.  It never will be.

Mike
(I've read all the Earth One and Pre-Crisis stories I need to.)  

[John Moores]

To me, the Super Friends and Super Powers comics are not canon and they are not in continuity.  Robin was never a member of the Justice League.  There never was a Legion of Doom.  There was no Hall of Justice.  Robin was in the Teen Titans.  There was an Injustice Gang and a Secret Society of Super-Villains.  The Justice League met in a cave in Happy Harbor, Rhode Island and then in a satellite.

To be fair, in the Super Friends and Powers comics:

Robin was never stated to be a JLAer, but a Teen Titan. There's no Legion of Doom in either, ever. There was a Hall of Justice, but it was largely to train younger heroes. The JLA Satellite appeared.

[SDcomics]

To be fair, in the Super Friends and Powers comics:

Robin was never stated to be a JLAer, but a Teen Titan. There's no Legion of Doom in either, ever. There was a Hall of Justice, but it was largely to train younger heroes. The JLA Satellite appeared.

And in all 261 issues of Justice League of America, there was never any mention made of a Hall of Justice.

John, to you those stories are canon.  To me, they're not.

And that's fine.  Sometimes, what's considered to be in continuity has to be up to each individual reader.

Mike
(Like I said, at the end of the day, these are all made up stories, after all.)

[Hyperion]

See, I've always considered Super Friends to be "Earth SF" and not connected to mainstream DCU much like Captain Carrot and such.  There are a lot of similar elements, like the satellite and such, but differing elements like the "Super Stereotypes".  The Super Powers minis were then the last stories told in that universe.  My take on it is that it was one of the many universes that was destroyed by th Anti-Monitor "off-camera", mainly because the heroes just weren't up to dealing with the level of threat the Crisis presented.

The Global Guardians concept, first introduced in the SF comic, turned out to be a good idea, so it had a counterpart that showed up on Earth One and it was those heroes that fought in the Crisis.

[John Moores]

The Stereotypes were never in the comic book. E. Nelson Bridwell couldn't stand them. 
He didn't use Jack Nimball Toyman, but Winslow.

[WVU Scott]

I see the Superfriends/powers comics as an extension of the cartoon and not DC proper.

IMO, proper use of a multi-verse makes all DC stuff cannon.

[Rocko]

To me, the only canon stories that include Darkseid are the ones by Kirby. That means that to me, Super Powers 1 and 2 are canon, Legends, the Legion book, whatever else, those are not.

The Super Powers minis are only related to the toyline in title. There were no characters in the first or second minis that weren't well established DC characters. In fact, Darkseid was in the first mini before there was a toy, had the line not been a hit, it wouldn't have been related much at all. It's doubtful Kirby gave a shit about the toys in any way at all. Editorial said "We want you to tell a story about the top DC heroes and these 3 villains, and we want it to involve Darkseid attacking Earth."

If you're steeped in the complete fucking trainwreck that is DC continuity, this might not be for you. However, if you're interested in the work the creator of the character of Darkseid, who also happens to be one of the greatest comic artists who ever lived, you should find these. Just pretend it's called "Darkseid's Revenge" or something.

[Doc]

The issues that Jack Draws?

Wow.

[Rocko]

Hey, if you like Super Powers, then you like 'em. That's fine.  I probably would have just let the whole thing go, but it was the "Maybe you weren't paying attention" part that made me respond.

I never read them.  I probably never will.  They're not canon to me.

So you're saying you weren't paying attention to them, then?

well, I was. I'll tell you more about it.

Super Powers is not the same continuity as Super Friends. Fuck Super Friends, not related. I don't give a shit about that.

But I do love Jack Kirby, and I especially love the New Gods. Kirby at DC is fucking fire. It deserves to be it's own thing, and it is. if you said something to Kirby about how this story can't be that because of continuity, he would probably just blink a couple times and ignore you. Kirby did Kirby, anybody with editorial bean counting bullshit was just in his way, and he told a complete story around it. I'll lay it out for you:

New Gods was out in the 70's, it was supposed to be Marvel at DC, that's what they wanted when they bought Jack. It wasn't. It was this cosmic, ambitious, far out stuff, and it was shortly cancelled. Years later, of course, DC took on Darkseid as the main villain, which to me is one of the single most galling things in comics.

New Gods was designed to be a sprawling epic. Jack foresaw what we've got now; a time at which single issues of comics would be collected into books. He envisioned New Gods as being sort of a Lord of the Rings type saga. Instead, he got his books cancelled.

There was Forever People and Mister Miracle, but they were companions to New Gods. New Gods was about Orion and Darkseid. It read like stories that were going somewhere, that would be finite. Not like a show like Law and Order or comic like Superman that will be on forever as long as there's a profit, but like Mad Men, which has a destination. An endpoint. Way too far out for mainstream comics then (and maybe now).

In the 80s, DC made overtures to get right with Jack. They brought him back to write a single issue length story to put at the end of the New Gods reprints they ran on beautiful Baxter Paper. They had 6 issues to fill, 2 original issues each, but the book was cancelled 11 issues in, so that last one got a nice extra bit. The first issue had the words READ THE NEW GODS-AS THEY REALLY ARE! A nice big FUCK YOU to everyone that had done other shit with these characters. New Gods was intensely personal to Jack. This was to be his magnum opus.

Those stories end with Orion completely defeated and seemingly dead.

At the same time Jack was doing that, he was writing the first Super Powers series, in which a now unchallenged Darkseid puts his target back on Earth, which Orion had been defending.

Then came Hunger Dogs, a prestige format book. Darkseid has given up on Earth for the moment and became fixated on micromanaging the shit out of Apokolips. He's bored. He brings Desaad, Kalibak, Mantis, and Steppenwulf back from the dead. They're the closest things he ever had to friends, but re-encarnated they're like zombies that he can command. He finds himself still depressed.

Orion struggles back from the edge of death, goes to kill Darkseid. Decides he's not really worth the effort and splits to go seek a happy life with a girl he likes. Just as Darkseid's kingdom begins to collapse, as his people (The Hunger Dogs) have an uprising.

The second Super Powers miniseries is about what happens after that. Once again, Darkseid is Earth's problem. He intends to make Earth into Apokolips, because he's just lost the actual Apokolips. At the end, he dies painfully because Desaad betrays him.

One of my favorite bits in any comic I've read follows as such- Desaad crows that the world is now his. Batman says "It's going to be hard ruling the cosmos on your back."

The book ends with a thing saying "Maybe hDarseid be back somehow." But Jack never drew him again, so no, he didn't. Not once does Cyclotron, Golden Pharoh, that Samurai dude, a couple twins, a dog, some bitch named Wendy, none of that is in there anywhere. Just Jack Kirby running wild with DC characters.

[degra]

I'm hoping they do finish the updates--light blue Sup, SP deco Wonder Woman, SP deco Batman, BA Lex, SP deco Penguin, SP deco Mr Freeze at retail and Rima and SP Kalibak oversized figure in the sub.

[JQ]

You have to look at those comics as spinoff media, which will always be dependent on a primary media. In general everything that happens in the primary media also happens in the spinoff, but not necessarily the other way around.

The Super Friends comics were a bit of their own thing, based on both the show and the mainstream comics which had some continuity differences between them. They definitely aren't the greatest comics around --  stories were pretty simple, though artwork was nice. And yes, events in Super Friends were referred to in the regular DCU but since the two continuities don't mesh you just have to figure that those are cases where the same events occurred in both universes.

[Doghouse Reilly]

Mike, I'm honestly curious:

The second Super Powers mini is Jack Kirby, one of the greatest visual storytellers to ever work in sequential art, drawing most of DC's top heroes, heroes I'm pretty sure you really like reading about, slugging it out with his own creation: Darkseid and his goons.

You really feel those comic books aren't worth your time because they don't quite jibe with 261 other comic books you've read?

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